Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion Min­is­ter Eli Za­k­our says the new ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port ter­mi­nal has not yet been hand­ed over to his min­istry, and he has no word on when that will hap­pen.

Speak­ing at Thurs­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, Za­k­our ex­plained that the ter­mi­nal re­mains un­der the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture. He said there was no up­date on what caused the de­lay in trans­fer­ring it, but the han­dover was still ex­pect­ed soon.

Ear­li­er this month, Works Min­is­ter Jear­lean John said the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (NID­CO) was car­ry­ing out walk-throughs with the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty at the new fa­cil­i­ty. She in­di­cat­ed that the aim was to hand over the build­ing by mid-Au­gust. Once that process is com­plet­ed, the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty, which falls un­der Za­k­our’s min­istry, will de­ter­mine when the ter­mi­nal opens to pas­sen­gers.

Al­though the new build­ing was com­mis­sioned in March, it has not yet been put in­to use. While most of the work on the ter­mi­nal is fin­ished, sev­er­al key steps re­main. These in­clude paving the run­way, im­prov­ing fire safe­ty sys­tems, and se­cur­ing fi­nal ap­proval from in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies.

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine has al­ready warned that fire re­sponse at the air­port must im­prove be­fore cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is grant­ed. He raised con­cerns ear­li­er this year af­ter a fire ten­der broke down on the run­way, caus­ing de­lays.

Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary Dr Faith Breb­nor has said To­bag­o­ni­ans want the new ter­mi­nal to open as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. Sec­re­tary of Tourism Tashia Bur­ris al­so stressed that the project is crit­i­cal for tourism, with the po­ten­tial to at­tract more vis­i­tors and boost busi­ness on the is­land.

The ter­mi­nal has been de­scribed as “prac­ti­cal­ly com­plet­ed” since ear­ly this year. It fea­tures mod­ern check-in sys­tems, nine de­par­ture gates, VIP lounges, a large pub­lic de­par­ture hall, and ex­pand­ed park­ing fa­cil­i­ties.

Con­struc­tion be­gan in Ju­ly 2020 un­der NID­CO and was car­ried out by Chi­na Rail­way Con­struc­tion Caribbean Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed. The project ex­pe­ri­enced de­lays due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, sup­ply chain prob­lems, and land ac­qui­si­tion is­sues.

The ter­mi­nal it­self cost about US$129.8 mil­lion, while land ac­qui­si­tion added an­oth­er US$44 mil­lion.